These damn cats...

So the development of Small Town Dad has really been a slow kind of introduction, blog style, to me and my family.

By way of recap - readers of these pages will now know:

1) I live in a small town in the middle of Michigan
2) I've been married 19 years and am the father of two great kids.
3) The guy down the street thinks I am a pain in the backside.
4) I am, perhaps, a pain in the backside.
5) I sometimes write as if I am getting paid by the word.

There is much to the story of my family still to be told.  Take for instance, these two damn cats hovering around my desk. I am not a cat person.  However, the three people with whom I share my home are unabashed cat people. So that's one more thing I got going for me.

The two cats have names, though I cannot remember them.  And as the children grew and became more fluent in the King's English, I couldn't keep calling the cats "dammit" and "HEYQUITIT!" So while I am almost certain of the fact we named them once, I cannot remember their names now.



The Brown's grandpa.  He's famous, or was.

 They are, to me, "the brown one" - a purebred Tonkinese whose grandcat was, seriously, some kind of National champion.  I am not sure what kind of National champion, so don't ask.  I don't recall a cat ever fighting Muhammad Ali or winning the US open, but he was a National champion of some sort. We have had the brown one for 11 years - and like my children when they came into our home, we became intoxicated immediately with how cute this cat was. Unlike my kids, the brown one's cuteness did not make up for her complete lack of usefulness for very long.

Then there is "the grey one."  The grey one is my fault entirely.  I thought I might like the brown one better if we got her a playmate and I could observe the two frolicking.  We thought it would be nice for her to have a "sister."  So I picked out the one and only cat at the adoption event that, as it turns out, had unbeknownst to me been living as a feral cat up until about two weeks before I "adopted her."
The cat is an evil genius.  It cuddled and played and snuggled and was perfect in every way at the “adoption event” - a communist front hosted by our local pet food supply supermarket. She remained a docile, purring gorgeous goddess until I forked over the 75.00 and signed the "adoption" papers.  Looking back, it should have been a major clue to me that the hippie running the adoption event; wild eyed and wearing sandals made from rope, was so covered in scratches that it appeared she had been waterskiing through a cactus patch while being towed by a runaway stage.

Anyhow, MoonFlower the cat lady says to me:

"This one is my absolute FAVORITE!  She is SUCH a sweetie....."

And then she added very quickly

“…ifyouadoptheryouhavetopromisetokeepherandnevergiveheruportakehertotheshelterandihaveputachipinherearandiwillfindoutifyougetridofher..."

She said it so fast that I had no idea what it meant.  All I knew was my then 5 year old son was in love with this cat and the yuppie two-income/no kids people who were in line before us were looking long and hard at the grey, docile one that was at that moment licking my son's face. 

At the time, I thought "How cute."  The cat, we later learned, was thinking "Taste's great!" So the grey one played us all.  She was all cute, warm and cuddly until we sprung her from the Hippie Hollow cat farm, but as soon as we got her home, she was a tigeress in a new jungle.

Now you might not imagine that my plan for the brown one and the grey one to get along like sisters actually worked, but it did. It was the one plan I have made in the last 20 years that actually came off without a hitch.  They get along exactly like sisters, lots of clawing and yelling and hissing and fighting over the bathroom until neither can tolerate the other and then one of them throws up.

The grey one, at least, I can respect.  She is a masterful fighter, cunning and resourceful tracker and the biggest cat bully I have ever met.  She got so good at hunting the brown one that we had to put a bell around her neck.  It was a week later that I caught her practicing her stalking route in the basement so that she could walk the entire route from the stairs to the litter box in measured, steady paces without making that bell ring. When she got to a point where the bell would ring, she froze, then backtracked precisely, and started again until she got it right.  I watched her practice this drill over the course of an entire week until she got to the point where she could mount an effective sneak attack on the brown one while the brown one was dropping anchor at Cat beach. Truth be told, the grey cat scares the crap out of me.  The brown one, not so much.  If this was a prison, the brown would be someone’s prison wife, I am sure of it.

Fortunately for both of them, the real people in charge in my house - my wife and both kids - love these worthless cats for reasons that escape me.  So for the most part I try and keep my cat cynicism to myself and continue to buy food and litter.  Alright, I admit it - I know their names.  The brown one is named Zoe and she is my wife's best friend.  She, the cat, understands most of the girl stuff that flies completely over my head.  She is pretty much "Thelma" to Jeanine's "Louise."  And the grey one is the mighty and impressive Sasha -and she is to the kids what most dogs are to little boys.  I only pretend to understand, because as a little boy I had dogs - and this is definitely a cat centric house.

Thanks for stopping by the blog today and catching up a bit on what goes on in our little corner of the world.